In a Time Division Multiplexed Access (TDMA) based wireless avionics system, a 4235-4400 MHz frequency spectrum may be shared by wireless avionics devices, and an aircraft's Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) Radio Altimeter (RA). A The radio altimeter transmits a radio frequency signal and looks for a corresponding return signal, continuously sweeping the signal frequency back and forth across the frequency spectrum in a see-saw pattern. For some wireless avionics devices, that same spectrum is used in a TDMA fashion divided into a fixed number of timeslots over a frame period. The frequency spectrum is divided into a number of channels, and timeslots for using those channels are allocated to wireless avionic devices in such a way as to allow them to communicate with the other nodes of the wireless avionic system and not interfere with the radio altimeter. To implement such a TDMA scheme and avoid signal collisions, wireless avionic devices need to be synchronized within a required amount of accuracy to guarantee that transmissions from the wireless avionic devices will not interfere with each other or with the radio altimeter. A constant frequency pulse type beacon is one device often used to synchronize devices across a network by providing a network standard sense of time, each pulse of the beacon marking the passage of some uniform unit of time that has elapsed since a preceding beacon signal occurred. However, the transmission of an in-spectrum pulse beacon for a wireless avionic system sharing spectrum with a radio altimeter would prove problematic because the radio altimeter signal will occasionally occupy the beacon channel at the precise moment the pulse beacon needs to transmit, denying wireless avionic devices the ability to receive the pulse beacon. Further, because the period of a radio altimeter signal pattern can vary, it may occasionally match the period of the pulse beacon which means that several sequential frames of beacon signals may be lost, allowing the internal sense of time at each wireless avionic device to drift beyond tolerance resulting in signal collisions. For example, if a wireless avionic sensor has an internal clock having an accuracy of 10−5/second, over the duration of a one second frame, up to 10 microseconds of drift could be expected. If not corrected, this drift may exceed the network's drift tolerance of 500 microseconds. Time protocol can be considered to address this problem, but implementing such protocols requires a significant overhead software processing, making it unsuitable for the relatively low complexity and limited processing of a wireless avionic device.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for alternate systems and methods to synchronize wireless avionic devices in the presence of a FMCW radio altimeter.